The New York Times’ Stuart Thompson reports dozens of fringe news websites, content farms, and fake reviewers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to create inauthentic content online, according to two reports released by NewsGuard and ShadowDragon.
The AI-generated content includes fabricated events, medical advice, and celebrity death hoaxes, raising concerns about the technology’s potential to reshape the misinformation landscape online.
NewsGuard identified 125 websites with content written entirely or mostly with AI tools, including a health information portal that published more than 50 AI-generated articles offering medical advice.
As with a lot of law firm websites and blogs, the inauthentic content is often produced to drive clicks.
The rise of AI-created sites is making it harder for consumers to distinguish between reliable and unreliable sources, further reducing trust in news sources.
““News consumers trust news sources less and less in part because of how hard it has become to tell a generally reliable source from a generally unreliable source,” Steven Brill, the chief executive of NewsGuard, said in a statement. “This new wave of A.I.-created sites will only make it harder for consumers to know who is feeding them the news, further reducing trust.””
When I started using the Internet in 1996 and later, blogs, in 2003, I couldn’t have imagined lawyers screwing these mediums up.
I told lawyers and other people that unlike the yellow pages and cheesy television and radio ads, the Internet and blogs would separate the lawyers who earned a reputation as an authority from those lawyers needing too buy “a name” to get work.
Lawyers would need to write and communicate in a real and authenticate way to standout on the Internet.
Boy was I wrong. Lawyers have turned the Internet into a giant yellow pages – except worse.
When it came to legal blogs Internet marketing companies told lawyers that websites come with blog content written for you.
That way you can get get clients and mislead the public that you wrote the content and have expertise in the area.
AI will most certainly be used by a good number of lawyers to write content in entirety. These lawyers misleadingly hold the content out as written by them.
For many legal bloggers, though, AI will be used in a powerful, effective and ethical way to amplify their passion, insight and commentary.
As with good legal blogging by good lawyers, I am cautiously optimistic that the cream will rise to the top.